Slashdot

---

• Fingerprints Can Now Be Dated To Within a Day of When They Were Made
• Uber Officially Bans Drivers From Carrying Firearms, But Company's Business Model Prevents Enforcement
• Sale of<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.Org Domain Registry Delayed By California Attorney General
• Brexit Happens
• Social Media Boosting Service Exposed Thousands of Instagram Passwords
• CERN Is Replacing Facebook Workplace With a Set of Open-Source Software Alternatives
• A New Bill Could Punish Web Platforms For Using End-To-End Encryption
• US Declares Public Health Emergency Over Coronavirus
• Huawei Outsells Apple In 2019, Becomes No. 2 Global Smartphone Vendor
• FCC Says Wireless Location Data Sharing Broke the Law
• Andrew Yang Warns Against 'Slaughterbots' and Urges Global Ban on Autonomous Weaponry
• This Sculpture Holds a Decades-Old C.I.A. Mystery. And Now, Another Clue.
• NASA is Trying To Save Voyager 2 After a Power Glitch Shut Down Its Instruments
• F-35's Gun That Can't Shoot Straight Adds To Its Roster of Flaws
• Amazon Reveals New Details About Its Federal Tax Bill in Shot Across the Bow at Critics

Fingerprints Can Now Be Dated To Within a Day of When They Were Made Posted: 31 Jan 2020 07:30 PM PST Writing in Analytical Chemistry, Paige Hinners and Young Jin Lee of Iowa State University say they have figured out an accurate way to data to within 24 hours when a fingerprint under a week old was made -- and thus whether it is associated with a crime temporally, as well as spatially. The Economist reports: They knew from work conducted by other laboratories that the triglyceride oils contained in fingerprints change by oxidation over the course of time. That provides an obvious way to date prints. The problem is that the techniques which have been applied to analyze these oils are able to distinguish age only crudely. In practice, they can determine whether or not a print is over a week old, but nothing else. Dr Hinners and Dr Lee wondered if higher precision could be obtained by thinking a bit more about oxidation. Oxygen molecules in the air come in two varieties. Most have a pair of atoms but some, known as ozone, have three. Though far rarer than diatomic oxygen, ozone is more reactive and also reacts in ways different from those of its two-atomed cousin. The two researchers therefore decided to focus their attentions on ozonolysis, as triatomic oxidation is known. Triglycerides, as their name suggests, are three-tailed molecules. Each tail is a chain of carbon atoms, with hydrogen atoms bonded to the carbons. The chains are held together by bonds between the carbon atoms. These are of two varieties, known as single and double bonds. Single bonds are, in chemistry-speak, saturated, and double bonds unsaturated. By extension, molecules with one or more double bonds in them are also referred to as unsaturated, while those with only single bonds are called saturated. Unsaturated bonds are more reactive, and it is here that ozonolysis does its work. Ozone breaks up triglycerides at their double bonds, with one or more of the ozone's oxygen atoms becoming attached to the carbon chain, to create new chemical species. In principle, this should result in a gradual loss of unsaturated triglycerides and a concomitant rise in the reaction products of ozonolysis. And that, in practice, is what Dr Hinners and Dr Lee found. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber Officially Bans Drivers From Carrying Firearms, But Company's Business Model Prevents Enforcement Posted: 31 Jan 2020 06:02 PM PST Iwastheone shares a report from The Atlantic, written by Sidney Fussell: Uber has banned guns in cars, for both drivers and passengers, since 2015. But over email and Facebook Messenger, four current and four former drivers told me they carry firearms on the job. In explaining why, they each cited the same self-determinalist rhetoric Uber has slapped on subway ads to entice drivers and used in hearings to justify the business model: Drivers maintain good ratings, own their own cars, set their own hours, act as their own bosses, and follow local laws. But ultimately, they work for themselves, and Uber is, to use a Silicon Valley term of art, just a platform. In 2017, Jose Mejia, a Miami driver, filed a federal class-action suit against Uber to reverse its firearm ban. Florida's 2008 "bring your gun to work" law empowers employees to store legal firearms in personal lockers or their own cars. With Uber, of course, the car is the workplace. Mejia claimed that Uber policy violated Florida law and, citing an incident in which an Uber driver with a concealed-carry license shot and disarmed a Chicago gunman, argued that arming Uber drivers could save lives. But Mejia couldn't prove that Uber violated his rights: He hadn't been fired or threatened with suspension. The company had announced a ban, yes, but never materially stopped him from carrying a firearm. The Florida court dismissed the suit (PDF) without prejudice in 2018. Here we have a uniquely American absurdity: Drivers can carry guns to work, to a bar, to a supermarket, but not in their own cars while using the app to transport passengers. Like Mejia, they exist in this space between name and effect, adherent to a ban with little practical enforcement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sale of<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.Org Domain Registry Delayed By California Attorney General Posted: 31 Jan 2020 05:25 PM PST California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) demanding more information about the private equity takeover of the .org domain registry. The attorney general is seeking answers to 35 questions concerning the sale as well as documents sent between ICANN, private equity firm Ethos Capital, and Public Interest Registry (PIR), which manages the .org domain. Mashable reports: Ethos Capital disclosed last year that it was acquiring PIR from its non-profit parent organization, the Internet Society, for $1.135 billion. ICANN, the non-profit organization that oversees domain names, disclosed the letter on its website along with its own correspondence with PIR, informing it of the development. Previously, ICANN had until Feb. 17 to approve or deny the sale. According to ICANN, as a result of the California AG's letter, it's seeking to delay this deadline until April 20. ICANN says it's "fully cooperating" with the request. In its letter to PIR, ICANN gives a heads up that it will be providing the attorney general "confidential material" to comply with the AG's demands. As ICANN's letter states, it has terms in its contract with PIR which forbid the organization from disclosing information that the registry deems confidential unless required by law. ICANN clearly views the AG's letter as applicable. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brexit Happens Posted: 31 Jan 2020 04:54 PM PST "The UK has officially left the European Union after 47 years of membership," reports the BBC. The historic moment, which happened at 23:00 GMT, was marked by both celebrations and anti-Brexit protests. Candlelit vigils were held in Scotland, which voted to stay in the EU, while Brexiteers partied in London's Parliament Square... Brexit parties were held in pubs and social clubs across the UK as the country counted down to its official departure. Hundreds gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit, singing patriotic songs and cheering speeches from leading Brexiteers, including Nigel Farage... In Northern Ireland, the campaign group Border Communities Against Brexit staged a series of protests in Armagh, near to the border with the Republic of Ireland. At 2300 GMT, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted a picture of the EU flag, adding: "Scotland will return to the heart of Europe as an independent country." The U.K. flag was removed from European Union institutions in Brussels, the BBC notes. And they also quote U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson as saying "For all its strengths and for all its admirable qualities, the EU has evolved over 50 years in a direction that no longer suits this country." "The most important thing to say tonight is that this is not an end but a beginning..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Social Media Boosting Service Exposed Thousands of Instagram Passwords Posted: 31 Jan 2020 04:02 PM PST An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A social media boosting startup, which bills itself as a service to increase a user's Instagram followers, has exposed thousands of Instagram account passwords. The company, Social Captain, says it helps thousands of users to grow their Instagram follower counts by connecting their accounts to its platform. Users are asked to enter their Instagram username and password into the platform to get started. But TechCrunch learned this week Social Captain was storing the passwords of linked Instagram accounts in unencrypted plaintext. Any user who viewed the web page source code on their Social Captain profile page could see their Instagram username and password in plain sight, so long as they had connected their account to the platform. Making matters worse, a website bug allowed anyone access to any Social Captain user's profile without having to log in -- simply plugging in a user's unique account ID into the company's web address would grant access to their Social Captain account -- and their Instagram login credentials. Because the user account IDs were for the most part sequential, it was possible to access any user's account and view their Instagram password and other account information with relative ease. The security researcher who reported the vulnerability provided a spreadsheet of about 10,000 scraped user accounts to TechCrunch. "The spreadsheet contained about 4,700 complete sets of Instagram usernames and passwords," the report says. "The rest of the records contained just the user's name and their email address." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CERN Is Replacing Facebook Workplace With a Set of Open-Source Software Alternatives Posted: 31 Jan 2020 03:30 PM PST CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is moving away from Facebook Workplace to instead make use of more open-source software packages. Phoronix reports: Facebook Workplace is Facebook's corporate-focused product for internal real-time communication and related communication needs within organizations. CERN had been making use of Facebook Workplace and in addition to data privacy concerns, they were recently confronted with either paying Facebook or losing administrative rights, no more single sign-on access, and Facebook having access to their internal data. But now they have assembled their own set of software packages to fill the void by abandoning Facebook Workplace. CERN is now using the Mattermost open-source software for online chat and Discourse for further information exchange. CERN's IT department is working on filling the gaps further left by getting rid of Facebook Workplace. [CERN has published a post with more details about the move.] ZDNet points out that this latest announcement "ends a nearly four-year trial with Facebook Workplace and means CERN will remove its presence from the platform on January 31, 2020." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A New Bill Could Punish Web Platforms For Using End-To-End Encryption Posted: 31 Jan 2020 02:40 PM PST Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is working on a bill that would reduce legal protections for apps and websites, potentially jeopardizing online encryption. The Verge reports: The draft bill would form a "National Commission on Online Child Exploitation Prevention" to establish rules for finding and removing child exploitation content. If companies don't follow these rules, they could lose some protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely shields companies from liability over users' posts. Reports from Bloomberg and The Information say that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is behind the bill, currently dubbed the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (or EARN IT) Act. It would amend Section 230 to make companies liable for state prosecution and civil lawsuits over child abuse and exploitation-related material, unless they follow the committee's best practices. They wouldn't lose Section 230 protections for other content like defamation and threats. The bill doesn't lay out specific rules. But the committee -- which would be chaired by the Attorney General -- is likely to limit how companies encrypt users' data. Large web companies have moved toward end-to-end encryption (which keeps data encrypted for anyone outside a conversation, including the companies themselves) in recent years. Facebook has added end-to-end encryption to apps like Messenger and Whatsapp, for example, and it's reportedly pushing it for other services as well. U.S. Attorney General William Barr has condemned the move, saying it would prevent law enforcement from finding criminals, but Facebook isn't required to comply. Under the EARN IT Act, though, a committee could require Facebook and other companies to add a backdoor for law enforcement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Declares Public Health Emergency Over Coronavirus Posted: 31 Jan 2020 02:20 PM PST The Trump administration on Friday declared a public healthy emergency over the coronavirus outbreak and said any foreign national who has traveled within China in the last 14 days will not be allowed to enter the country. The Wall Street Journal reports: The announcement [from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar] came as stock markets tumbled amid concern about how the impact of the virus could slow global growth. At the same time, Mr. Azar sought to minimize fears about the virus spreading further in the U.S. "I hope that people will see that their government is taking responsible steps to protect them," he said at a White House briefing. "The risk is low... but our job is to keep that risk low." There are six confirmed cases in the U.S. and 191 people are under investigation, officials said. Meantime, Americans who were evacuated from the epicenter of the China coronavirus outbreak will be quarantined for 14 days at a U.S. military base to prevent any spread of the infectious disease, federal health authorities said Friday. The quarantine -- the first in the U.S. ordered by the federal government in roughly 50 years -- came as the U.K. and Russia each reported their first cases of the dangerous virus, while other countries moved to limit air traffic with China as the number of people infected there approached 10,000. The quarantine applies to 195 U.S. citizens evacuated Wednesday from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak, and brought to the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, Calif., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The State Department also on Friday advised Americans in China to consider leaving and requested all nonessential U.S. government personnel to postpone travel there. The State Department's "Do Not Travel" advice placed China on the same list as Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela. It follows the WHO's designation Thursday of the coronavirus as a global public-health emergency. Additionally, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines said they will suspend all U.S.-China flights for at least several weeks due to the outbreak. Delta's suspensions will begin Feb. 6 and last through April 30. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huawei Outsells Apple In 2019, Becomes No. 2 Global Smartphone Vendor Posted: 31 Jan 2020 02:02 PM PST An anonymous reader writes: Market research firms Canalys and Counterpoint Research have posted their 2019 global smartphone market share reports. Both reports say the biggest mover is Huawei, which, thanks to a whopping 16-17 percent annual growth, claimed the No. 2 smartphone vendor spot in 2019, behind Samsung and ahead of Apple. Both firms have similar global market share numbers for 2019, with Samsung around 20 percent, Huawei at 16 percent, Apple at 13 percent, and Xiaomi and Oppo around eight percent each. Counterpoint credits Huawei's success in its hometown of China for its success, saying, "This was the result of an aggressive push from Huawei in the Chinese market, where it achieved almost 40 percent market share." According to the firm, China makes up 60 percent of Huawei's shipments. "For what it's worth, Canalys has Q4 2019 as Huawei's first quarterly decline -- down seven percent from Q3 -- in two years, which it blames on the [Trump Administration's Huawei export ban]," adds Ars. "Together with the annual Apple Q4 surge thanks to the launch of a new iPhone, Huawei fell to third place again within that time period." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FCC Says Wireless Location Data Sharing Broke the Law Posted: 31 Jan 2020 01:26 PM PST Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai told lawmakers Friday he intends to propose fines against at least one U.S. wireless carrier for sharing customers' real-time location data with outside parties without the subscribers' knowledge or consent. From a report: The FCC has been investigating for more than a year following revelations that subscriber location data from AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint made its way to a resale market used by bounty hunters. Pai said in letters to several lawmakers that the agency's investigation has found that "one or more wireless carriers apparently violated federal law." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andrew Yang Warns Against 'Slaughterbots' and Urges Global Ban on Autonomous Weaponry Posted: 31 Jan 2020 12:46 PM PST Ahead of the Democratic presidential primaries that begin Monday with the Iowa caucus, presidential candidate Andrew Yang called for a global ban on the use of autonomous weaponry. In a tweet, Yang called for U.S. leadership to implement a ban on automated killing machines, then shared a link to a Future of Life Institute video titled "Slaughterbots," which offers a cautionary and dystopian vision of the future. From a report: [...] In the video, the fictional CEO promises the ability to target and wipe out "the bad guys" or people with "evil ideology" or even entire cities. The video then imagines the breaking out of partisan political warfare. The drones are used to assassinate 11 U.S. Senators of one political party at the U.S. Capitol building. In the wake of the hypothetical attack, it's unclear after assessment from the intelligence community what state, group, or individual carried it out, but in the confusion calls for war and violent crime ratchet up. There is some precedent in reality. Russian company Kalishnakov is developing a kamikaze drone, and though it was most likely piloted by a human, the world saw one of the first targeted political assassination attempts with a drone in history in 2018 in Venezuela. DARPA is developing ways for swarms of drones to take part in military missions, and the U.S. Department of Defense developed hardware to guard against weaponized drone attacks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This Sculpture Holds a Decades-Old C.I.A. Mystery. And Now, Another Clue. Posted: 31 Jan 2020 12:05 PM PST The creator of one of the world's most famous mysteries is giving obsessive fans a new clue. From a report: Kryptos, a sculpture in a courtyard at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., holds an encrypted message that has not fully yielded to attempts to crack it. It's been nearly 30 years since its tall scroll of copper with thousands of punched-through letters was set in place. Three of the four passages of the sculpture have been decrypted (the first, though unacknowledged at the time, was solved by a team from the National Security Agency). But after nearly three decades, one brief passage remains uncracked. And that has been a source of delight and consternation to thousands of people around the world. The sculptor, Jim Sanborn, has been hounded for decades by codebreaking enthusiasts. And he has twice provided clues to move the community of would-be solvers along, once in 2010 and again in 2014. Now he is offering another clue. The last one, he says. It is a word: "NORTHEAST." Why do people care so much about a puzzle cut into a sheet of copper in a courtyard after so much time? It's not just that the piece itself has a kind of brooding, powerful beauty, or the fact that it has been referred to in novels by the thriller writer Dan Brown. It is something deeper, something that involves the nature of the human mind, said Craig Bauer, a professor of mathematics at York College of Pennsylvania and a former scholar in residence at the N.S.A.'s Center for Cryptologic History. "We have many problems that are difficult to resolve -- intimidating, perhaps even scary," he said. "It gives people great pleasure to pick up on one that they think they have a chance of solving." [...] Why now? Did we mention Mr. Sanborn is 74? Holding on to one of the world's most enticing secrets can be stressful. Some would-be codebreakers have appeared at his home. Many felt they had solved the puzzle, and wanted to check with Mr. Sanborn. Sometimes forcefully. Sometimes, in person. NPR spoke with Sanborn (4-min). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA is Trying To Save Voyager 2 After a Power Glitch Shut Down Its Instruments Posted: 31 Jan 2020 11:25 AM PST Last Saturday, Voyager 2's software shut down all five of the scientific instruments onboard because the spacecraft was consuming way too much power. Engineers at NASA don't know what triggered this energy spike and are currently trying to get the interstellar probe, which was launched in 1977, back to normal operations. Its primary mission was supposed to last five years. In 2018, it officially left the solar system. In order to keep the spacecraft running properly 42 years later, NASA has had to carefully manage power consumption for the instruments and the probe's heaters. From a report: About 11.5 billion miles away, Voyager 2 was supposed to make a scheduled 360-degree rotation that would help calibrate its magnetometer (used to measure magnetic fields). The spacecraft delayed this move for still unknown reasons, leaving two other internal systems running at high power. The onboard software decided to offset this power deficit by shutting down the five scientific instruments still working. NASA engineers shut down one of the power-hungry systems and turned the science instruments back on. But the spacecraft is still not cleared for normal operations and is not collecting any new data for now. [...] It takes 17 hours for data from Earth to get to Voyager 2, and vice versa. This lag means it will take several days to solve the spacecraft's woes. As it is, the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which powers the spacecraft, is only expected to last another five years before the plutonium-238 can no longer provide enough heat to power the probe's instruments, so Voyager 2 is on its last hurrah anyway. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

F-35's Gun That Can't Shoot Straight Adds To Its Roster of Flaws Posted: 31 Jan 2020 10:44 AM PST Add a gun that can't shoot straight to the problems that dog Lockheed Martin's $428 billion F-35 program, including more than 800 software flaws. From a report: The 25mm gun on Air Force models of the Joint Strike Fighter has "unacceptable" accuracy in hitting ground targets and is mounted in housing that's cracking, the Pentagon's test office said in its latest assessment of the costliest U.S. weapons system. The annual assessment by Robert Behler, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, doesn't disclose any major new failings in the plane's flying capabilities. But it flags a long list of issues that his office said should be resolved -- including 13 described as Category 1 "must-fix" items that affect safety or combat capability -- before the F-35's upcoming $22 billion Block 4 phase. The number of software deficiencies totaled 873 as of November, according to the report obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of its release as soon as Friday. That's down from 917 in September 2018, when the jet entered the intense combat testing required before full production, including 15 Category 1 items. What was to be a year of testing has now been extended another year until at least October. "Although the program office is working to fix deficiencies, new discoveries are still being made, resulting in only a minor decrease in the overall number" and leaving "many significant" ones to address, the assessment said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Reveals New Details About Its Federal Tax Bill in Shot Across the Bow at Critics Posted: 31 Jan 2020 10:05 AM PST Amazon disclosed new details about its U.S. taxes for 2019 in public financial documents and a blog post Friday morning, saying its federal income tax expense for the year was more than $1 billion, in addition to more than $2 billion in other types of federal taxes. From a report: The disclosures appear designed to push back against assertions from politicians and researchers that Amazon does not pay any federal income tax. However, the federal income tax is still a small fraction of the company's profits, representing about 6 percent of the $14.5 billion in operating income that Amazon reported Thursday in its year-end financial report. "Like most governments that try to encourage economic investment by companies, the U.S. Congress has written a tax code that incentivizes the type of job creation, capital investment, development of technology, and employee ownership that Amazon does because these are critical drivers of a prosperous economy," the company says in its post. "We follow all applicable federal and state tax laws, and our U.S. taxes are a reflection of our continued investments, compensation of our employees, and the current tax rules." Federal tax laws also allow the company to delay payment of the bill. According to regulatory filings, Amazon will pay $162 million in federal income taxes for 2019 now, and an additional $900 million over time due to deferrals for which the company is eligible. That adds up to the $1 billion federal income tax expense Amazon says it's on the hook for in 2019. Amazon will pay an additional $2.4 billion in other federal taxes, like payroll and custom duties, the company said, and $1.6 billion to state and local governments for the year. In addition, Amazon paid $9 billion in sales and duty taxes last year, the company said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You are subscribed to email updates from Slashdot. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States